Guild Wars 2

Hello, id like to know what everyone thinks about this pve dungeon build. I know a lot of people bash siphon builds and claim that the healing isn’t worth the use of traits, but I have had a lot of success with this build and would like some constructive criticism on how it could possibly be made more effective.

For the gear I went with full knights (power/prescision/toughness) with Ruby orbs, and for the trinkets a combination of knights and berserkers.

the traits would be:

30: II/VI/XI
0
10: IV
30: II/VIII/XII

the weapon sets are: Axe/warhorn & Dagger/focus

Skills: well of blood/consume conditions, well of corruption, Well of suffering, Well of blindness, and I switch up between hounds of Balthazar or flesh golem for the elite.

thanks for reading, id really like to know what you all think of the build.

Edit: also a 0 in soul reaping

It’s nice and solid since you can put up to 9 seconds of protection. Add in blindness, all that subtle health siphon, and even dagger 2, you’re going to last a long while and help your party out. I liked it quite a bit myself with multipurpose wells though it felt a bit slow. I would suggest putting in berserker gear though, since I feel that the traits give you sufficient survivability. Depends on how comfortable you feel with survivability.

Vampiric Rituals is cute, because then all your wells will do damage, but you may want to consider 10 points elsewhere. One good idea might be chilling darkness in curses, as then you will also add chill per hit of your well of darkness. Still, I wouldn’t say no either to Rituals.

I would also switch the warhorn and focus around. Warhorn is more suitable for closeup, closing distances, and running away, so pairing it with the dagger works. Focus offers vulnerability, which goes with the axe.

Also it appears that the focus trait is broken :S
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Something-wrong-with-Focus

If you’re using knights gear and have high precision, you may also want to consider vampiric precision instead of ritual mastery. Yes, the cooldown on wells sucks, but vampiric precision heals for an additional 54 on top of the 40 from vampiric, and can trigger from any skill that hits enemies (including wells). If you’ve got about 66% crit chance (a reasonable amount with knights gear/consumables/sigil of perception), then every hit heals you for an average of 76 instead of just 40.

Of course, if you already feel like you’ve got enough life stealing going on, then ritual mastery is definitely better.

radsaq.8269:

If you’re using knights gear and have high precision, you may also want to consider vampiric precision instead of ritual mastery. Yes, the cooldown on wells sucks, but vampiric precision heals for an additional 54 on top of the 40 from vampiric, and can trigger from any skill that hits enemies (including wells). If you’ve got about 66% crit chance (a reasonable amount with knights gear/consumables/sigil of perception), then every hit heals you for an average of 76 instead of just 40.

Of course, if you already feel like you’ve got enough life stealing going on, then ritual mastery is definitely better.

I’m not sure I agree with that take. I haven’t checked out the numbers, so won’t make a specific suggestion, but you also have to keep in mind the overall siphon increases gained from being able to use wells more often. On the one hand, taking Vampiric Precision would increase your healing per strike from wells, but Ritual Mastery increases how often you can make those strikes and gain siphon from Vampiric Rituals. I think it would be important to compare the relative gains of each before making a decision on it, and that wouldn’t be possible without knowing the full Crit Chance percentage as well. Just something to consider.

I currently use a very similar setup with bezerker gear. I found that after the lifesteal food nerf blood magic really makes a difference. The only problem is i now lack quite a bit of precision so i may change the traits around again, at some point. Heres what I use:

30: V/VI/XII
0
0
15: V
25: VI/VIII

Im thinking of taking some points out of power and adding them to blood or curses but im gonna wait till i have ascended trinkets first.

Drake Phoenix.6158:

radsaq.8269:

If you’re using knights gear and have high precision, you may also want to consider vampiric precision instead of ritual mastery. Yes, the cooldown on wells sucks, but vampiric precision heals for an additional 54 on top of the 40 from vampiric, and can trigger from any skill that hits enemies (including wells). If you’ve got about 66% crit chance (a reasonable amount with knights gear/consumables/sigil of perception), then every hit heals you for an average of 76 instead of just 40.

Of course, if you already feel like you’ve got enough life stealing going on, then ritual mastery is definitely better.

I’m not sure I agree with that take. I haven’t checked out the numbers, so won’t make a specific suggestion, but you also have to keep in mind the overall siphon increases gained from being able to use wells more often. On the one hand, taking Vampiric Precision would increase your healing per strike from wells, but Ritual Mastery increases how often you can make those strikes and gain siphon from Vampiric Rituals. I think it would be important to compare the relative gains of each before making a decision on it, and that wouldn’t be possible without knowing the full Crit Chance percentage as well. Just something to consider.

That’s why I said “you may also want to consider.” The right thing to do is probably also highly dependent upon the type of content you’re running and how long your typical fight is expected to last.

@archon wing: the big reason why I don’t want to take out ritual mastery, is because the health siphon on wells actually heals pretty amazingly in dungeons when youre fighting groups of 4+ enemies, especially when combined with siphon works 50% better. its basically what I based this build around. also @radsaq, the same thing applies to the cooldown on wells, im just not sure if giving up aat sustained healing from the wells decreased cooldown and not to mention all the extra damage dealing and blindness capabilities. im not sure though, anyone have any idea how that equate out? im sure the life stealing on crits would be much better for single enemies, but that’s rarely the case in dungeons

Also, the comment about switching the off hands around, I spent a lot of time sitting there thinking about what would be better, the reason I chose axe/warhorn and dagger/focus was that the axe has a snare and vulnerability already so I thought it might be better to have a vuln and snare option on my dagger set. also when im going with axe (the ranged option) its usually because im trying to avoid being in melee range hence the speed boos from warhorn. You may be right about switching them around tho as I could then get even more stacks of vuln when im on my axe set. its a tough choice to make

I am using a very similar build. The only thing is that i don’t rely on crit because i dont need to. I am only using soldiers equipment and trinkets. I thought it would be slow but it is fast enough for me. And i can stay alive a long long time!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHhhu1IjWlemmnG/eCQmB2QP9g7xFH+QuA

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|8.1c.0.d.1c.0|7.1c.0.g.1c.0|1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1c.0|1c.68.1c.68.1c.68.1c.68.1c.68.cc.68|f2.0.p48.u28c.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

When i need to i switch to staff, but i rarely do

I run a full zerker / celestial ascended build: 30/10/0/20/10
Taking the siphon life on crit and 50% more effective traits in blood. It heals for a fairly significant amount over time. But you should also not forget it deals damage but just doesn’t show it. On the fast attacking axe and dagger it will add significant damage so overall i think that trait line is well worth the pts.

Sazgo.9842:

I run a full zerker / celestial ascended build: 30/10/0/20/10
Taking the siphon life on crit and 50% more effective traits in blood. It heals for a fairly significant amount over time. But you should also not forget it deals damage but just doesn’t show it. On the fast attacking axe and dagger it will add significant damage so overall i think that trait line is well worth the pts.

What trait adds damage without showing?

Life leeching effects all do damage but it is invisible in combat log much like conditions and hard to see if you only used blood magic with a condi stacking build due to the floating numbers so people often assume they didn’t do dmg. The on crit siphon is an extra number seperate to the normal siphon life aswell kinda gets hidden if you have 15 bleed stacks + poison.